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Middle East Arms Fair Oil Panic Crisis Endgame.

Note with contempt and scorn the efforts of the British Prime Minister to appear relaxed walking through Cairo’s Tahrir Square on the way to his important gloat over the first Gulf War, accompanying his arms-trader mates heading to a Lords-of-War fest in Abu Dhabi. View the PMs itinerary in the context of over a thousand UK weapons and ‘defense’ contracts signed in Kuwait since 2003, and recall that it was US tear gas used recently against protesters in Egypt, and that Libya’s Colonel was so recently embraced by Blair, Obama and, no surprise given the Pretorian angle, Berlusconi. Be amazed, but understand that with the current apoplectic convulsions of the Western elite vis a vis the people’s uprisings across the world – of course the right, just and timely thing to do now is visit a weapons sales conference! The consequences of the financial crisis, banking bailout and housing mortgage collapse means repressive gun-belt-tightening cut-backs at home, but it also entails a frantic drive for quick fire investment in unstable markets. Its an old play called cowboy capitalism, and the infamous likes of Halliburton, Blackwater (now Xe) and Aegis (formerly Sandline), are joined by the PMs own arms-‘trade delegation’ that includes manufacturers of attack planes, Riot control vehicles and CS gas, armaments and other radar, surveillance and secret ops specialists. Alongside Cameron on the trip are decorated scions such as: Ian King of BAE Systems; Charles Hughes, of defense/security service communications systems specialist and top 100 defense contractor, the Cobham Group; Douglas Castner of Ultra Electronics Airborne bomber designers with radio communications interests; and the managing director of military ‘nuclear market leader’ Babcock International, and more. Yes, of course these are the travelling companions you want with you when you head into Kuwait to commemorate 20 years of war with Iraq. Along the way, the discussion must turn to the volatile oil price, which bucks and trends with more than a little in-flight turbulence. What was conceived in one crisis plays out as a scramble for contracts during another – and the alibi of meeting a few ‘genuinely inspiring’ people who ‘have risked a lot for what they believe in’ while flanked by dodgy security grunts in Tahrir only reinforces the disingenuous hypocrisy of a man who believes in nothing but the short-term advantage for his gunslinger mates. If any tyrannical regime needs urgently to be defeated and changed, it is the ongoing market imperialism of the British Arms Industry, financed by bank bailouts and opportunist-militarist sales-talk even amidst cuts and crisis. These travellers should be kicked off the plane, the plane should be refused reentry and ditched, the PM dumped at sea. We need a Tahrir of our own, and it surely starts in Parliament Square SW1. -TW.